Sunshine and early crowds set Black-Eyed Susan day at Laurel Park
Sunshine and blue skies greeted early arrivals at Laurel Park as a 14-race Black-Eyed Susan card opened a Preakness week unlike any in Maryland racing.
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Sunshine, blue skies with a few white clouds and crisp temperatures greeted the first wave of fans at Laurel Park, where Black-Eyed Susan Day opened with the feel of a festival long before the feature race went off. The 14-race program gave the track a full-day rhythm, and the early crowd energy suggested that Maryland racing still has pull when the setting is right and the calendar is loaded with stakes.
That mattered at Laurel for reasons beyond the weather. The Preakness Festival had shifted to the track while Pimlico Race Course was rebuilt, putting Laurel Park at the center of Maryland racing attention for a weekend that normally belongs to Baltimore. The temporary move gave Black-Eyed Susan Day extra weight, because it served as the first major test of how the venue handles a marquee event when the sport’s national spotlight is pointed its way.
The card itself backed up the scene with substance. Black-Eyed Susan Day featured six stakes races, three of them graded, with about $1 million to $1.05 million in purses on the line. Laurel’s George E. Mitchell Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, listed at $300,000 guaranteed, was the centerpiece: the 102nd running of the 1 1/8-mile race for 3-year-old fillies, scheduled as Race 13 with a post time of 6:14 p.m. ET.
The Friday program also set the stage for a faster-moving Saturday. Laurel Park’s race-info page listed first post for Black-Eyed Susan Day at 11:30 a.m. ET and first post for Preakness Day on Saturday, May 16, at 10:30 a.m. ET. The track’s Preakness Meet ran from May 4 through June 30, with live racing from May 8 through June 28, and Laurel had been approved for 120 days of live racing in 2026. That schedule underlined how much of Maryland racing’s current momentum runs through Laurel, not around it.
The day’s atmosphere offered its own answer to the bigger question hanging over the meet: whether fans would follow the sport beyond the headline races. With the 151st Preakness Stakes set for Laurel on Saturday and the companion race steeped in tradition since 1873, Black-Eyed Susan Day was more than a warm-up. It was the opening act for a rare stretch in which Laurel Park carried the weight, the crowd and the stakes of Maryland racing’s biggest weekend.
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